Re: ACTION REQUIRED: Call for Consensus: Proposed Resolution of Issue-154

09.02.2015, 03:33, "Doug Schepers" <schepers@w3.org>:
> Hi, folks–
>
> Is there any sympathy for the position that AC Review should at least
> have the option of being public?

Yes.

> There are 2 scenarios in particular that I think would benefit from
> public visibility:
>
> 1) AC reviews of WG charters: it would be useful to be able to talk to
> the larger community about how much support there is for a particular
> working group, and which companies are interested in it, so we can build
> community support and awareness for the group's work;

I think this highlights the big issue. Members' right to confidentiality should include the basic right to not being "outed" through the game of 'guess who is missing'…

> 2) Formal Objections during Proposed Recommendation phase: such
> objections at the very least delay publication of Recommendations, and
> it's difficult for chairs and staff contacts to set expectations about
> the current status, next steps, and expected timelines when we can't
> talk publicly about the issues raised; just recently, this happened with
> the Pointer Events specification, and I think the Director would have
> been better informed by the kind of conversation that the community can
> bring to bear on such reviews.

As the objector in question for Pointer Events - and for the record, the objector in another case although the group in question doesn't even have an active charter so I wonder how they propose a Recommendation - I think that
- W3C should be much faster to explain the substance of an objection even where they are unable to reveal the individual organisation who made it - and as noted above I think that providing "hints" through a semi-public review would be inappropriate. For example, if I failed to state that I was representing the organisation behind the Pointer Events and RDFa objections, I believe that many people would have failed to "guess the right answer", and taken a positiion on the behaviour of other members that would be either ill-informed or represent a gross breach of confidence.

> Sometimes there are good reasons for these reviews to be Member-only,
> and even Team-only, and Members should always have those options; but
> sometimes a Member may wish to express their views in public in a formal
> way, and I suggest that at least allowing the public option would serve
> those needs (and the interests of the larger Web community).

I certainly believe that a "public" option for reviews is useful. In the two cases at hand I may or may not have taken it - there is a certain amount of work involved in producing a statement for the public that can be skipped for a statement that is member-only (as were both our objections mentioned above), and a certain further amount that can be skipped by making the objection team-only.

The price of making everything public, is chasing certain discussions further "underground" than they need to be. The balance is difficult to write as an algorithm. I think it would be useful to provide a clear option for public responses in AC reviews - but it would be foolish to expect this to be the norm (which I suspect is not to answer at all…)

cheers 

--
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
chaals@yandex-team.ru - - - Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Monday, 9 February 2015 01:13:56 UTC